Provides facts about the problems in various areas of disposal and recycling, including disposal of hazardous waste and alternative treatment of sewage. Discusses alternative solutions for each set of problems. 12-01

"One person's trash is literally another person's treasure, if that person happens to be a freegan (search). They’re not vegans who refuse to eat meat or animal products, these people eat out of the garbage." 10-04

"Without money, governments cannot run buses so that residents without cars can search for jobs and go to work. They cannot educate the children of families that might try to return. They cannot provide health care, pick up garbage or begin the detailed planning and engineering necessary to bring a city back to life."

"They are locked in a painful loop, unable to lure back exiled residents without services, but unable to provide the services without tax bases." 10-05

"To PRECYCLE is to make buying choices that support responsible products and packaging, make recycling easier and reduce the amount of garbage you throw away. Precycling is a good way to start squaring your personal behavior with your principles." 03-06

"With the financial crisis now midway through its second year, a central problem for the US economy remains: how to convincingly clear away a garbage-pile of bad debts at banks and move forward with a solvent industry."

"A leading idea under review by the Obama administration is to set up a so-called "bad bank" as a holding pen for the risky assets that spawned the crisis. Administration officials have talked about this concept, and have said they want to avoid temporarily nationalizing some very large banks." 01-09

"This week, city counselors in Ottawa, Ontario, unanimously approved a new waste-to-energy facility that will turn 400 metric tons of garbage per day into 21 megawatts of net electricity--enough to power about 19,000 homes." In this scenario, it takes 19 metric tons of biomass to generate a megawatt of electricity. 06-09

"Crows don’t regularly visit feeders, but you can attract them to your backyard if you offer a mix of trees, open space, and food. Peanuts left in an open place are a good attractant. Crows are also attracted by compost, garbage, or pet food that the birds can feed on." 10-10

"What is the largest type of trash produced in the U.S.? It’s not whatever you’re thinking, most likely. It’s coal ash."

"Burning coal produces more than 100 million metric tons of coal ash per year—the gray or black sooty aftermath of our fossil fuel habit. Even though a good chunk of it is turned into concrete, tens of millions of metric tons end up dumped back into old mines and landfills or impounded in slurry ponds (to keep it from blowing away)."

"Coal ash is not a benign form of garbage. Burning coal concentrates the heavy metals and other toxic elements (including radionuclides) found in the dirtiest of fossil fuels. Samples of Dan River water sent for testing by Waterkeeper Alliance revealed arsenic, chromium and lead at dangerously high levels. The arsenic levels of 0.349 milligrams per liter is some 35 times higher than levels considered acceptable for drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)."

"The EPA is still considering the larger question of what should be done nationwide about this toxic pollution that we have in copious quantities, after industry criticism stalled the first-ever proposal in 2010 to regulate the hazardous waste. But the agency has already determined that more than 580 coal-ash storage sites exist in varying states of repair across the U.S., many like the one that leaked into the Dan River." 02-14

"We can see countless millions of miles into the blackness of space, but a three-mile depth in the ocean is testing the very limits of our technology. Never mind finding a missing jet, we're incapable of establishing even the most basic facts about the ocean floor."

"The other issue affecting visibility is the sheer volume of junk in the ocean. Around 5.25 trillion particles of plastic trash presently billow around the planet, say experts, weighing half a million tons. There are five huge garbage patches in the world’s seas, where the swirling of currents makes the mostly plastic debris accumulate. The largest of these is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre measuring an estimated 700,000 to 15 million sq km. This refuse gets ingested by plankton, fish, birds and larger marine mammals, imperiling our entire ecosystem."